The New York Times asked for help to make a mix tape about autumn. I know the number one song for autumn—heck, it’s probably number 2 and 3 as well, and the best song for wedding receptions, first dates, and anything else you play music for: Moondance by Van Morrison.
Also good are King Harvest by The Band [it even has harvest in the title] and Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon and Garfunkel to cut the sweetness of Moondance. Yes, I was in high school in 1968.
Another record that is much better than I remember (or perhaps ever knew). The lyrics of rock and roll, blues, and folk have a simple goal—don’t get in the way. These songs—the epitome of singer/songwriter skills–are poetry. She rhymes barter and martyr in Roses Blue. In the Gallery, the artist she addresses says don’t love me now, I am dead. Then he says Please love me now, I am dead. That’s a lot artier than You Really Got Me.
There are some red clouds at sunset on the album cover; otherwise the clouds are only in Both Sides Now. I know I’ve changed my mind about that song. It’s probably plenty to recall life’s illusions rather than, say, get smacked over the head with a 2 by 4. I love Bob Seger’s line—I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. Knowing is overrated.
I inherited this record a couple years ago and had no idea how good it was. I was skeptical about a young English woman with granny glasses trying to cover Son House. My mistake—she didn’t want to sound like him, she BECAME Son House when she played. Such a sad story—she died of a brain tumor about 10 years after this album came out. Listen to her on YouTube.
The lyrics to Fingerprint Blues sound like an episode of CSI or Law and Order. I’m a good child, but now I’m prison bound … when they found my gun, they found my switchblade knife, oh lord, they had my fingerprints twice … I’ve been skippin’ and dodgin’, goin’ from town to town, my friends have left me, lord, my fingerprints have been found … if you can’t come to the courtroom, please come to the prison walls.
I heard somebody refer to BankAmericard recently. It’s been 50 years or so since they changed the name. (I raised my kids to call Nissans Datsuns, but I don’t care about credit cards.) I thought of Albert Collins, whose 1978 album Ice Pickin’ contains Master Charge, a song that used outdated names for Mastercard and Visa to complain about the bills his wife ran up shopping with them. He said it was $500 the first day (about $1900 in today’s dollars). Me, I live near a fancy shopping block in Chicago, and the prices in the windows there are very high. I don’t know what’s expensive any more.
Collins was a superb blues performer. I saw him at Biddy Milligan’s on Sheridan Road in the late ‘70s. He earned his nickname of Master of the Telecaster that night. He was part showman, part shaman as he used all of his 100-foot guitar cord to dance through the revolving door as he was playing a solo. He encouraged the folks on the sidewalk to come on in, and then danced back through the door without missing a note.
I’ll get to the four albums of his I have. I wanted to tell the story about BankAmericard and his remarkable performance while Master Charge was stuck in my head.
I can count at least five lies in that title. It is one of the worst records I ever bought. I hurried through a used record store in Toronto recently and saw this had at least a few good songs and cost $2. The sticker the store put on the record was cute: Random Compilation Record. Something more accurate: Lots of schlock. ‘Elenore’ by the Turtles is great—the lyrics rhyme ‘pride and joy, etcetra’ with ‘tell me that you love me betta.’ I’ve read that the Turtles meant to mock the smooth love songs they’d done such as ‘Happy Together.’ Even their put-ons were good pop music. ‘Crimson and Clover’ by Tommy James and the Shondells is okay—I was 16 when it came out, it’s about sex, and there’s plenty of wah-wah pedal. I heard ‘Quick Joey Small’ once on Bandstand and thought it was catchy. I was wrong. The other stuff I never need to hear again.
It’s about six weeks since a co-founder of The Band died—there must have been some attraction for a generic collective name for a band in the 1960s. Peter Frampton quit high school to join The Herd, as I recall.
Kirkman wrote Cherish, Along Comes Mary, Never My Love, and maybe a dozen more songs that were on Top 40 radio. He didn’t like the other members of The Association and left the band (instead of spending 50 years touring behind their hits, the way many bands did). He was an addiction counselor for 20 years.
His obit has a self-effacing reference to a terrible appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, but the final anecdote sounds grumpy about his being famous for one song. For 45 years, he said, he was always introduced as I’d like you to meet Terry, he wrote Cherish. He wanted to change his name to Cherish to speed that up. Man, I never heard Bobby Hebb complain of 50 years of being the guy who wrote Sunny.
He’s 80. He announced the return of Bachman-Turner Overdrive to touring (plus a concert film and an album). Joining him is his 55-year-old son, Tal, and touring musicians. Fred Turner is around and involved, the press release said, but won’t be touring.
I saw BTO playing with Burton Cummings at SARSstock in Toronto in 2003. The Rolling Stones got top billing; AC/DC played the best show, says me. As the band started Takin’ Care of Business, my 19-year-old son’s face lit up—finally a song he recognized. “Staples commercial, right?” he said.
I have a BTO record—Head On, released in 1975. Little Richard played piano! Take It Like a Man was about the drudgery of touring small towns in out-of-the-way places where people would come to see the band. Lookin’ Out For #1 expressed the same point of view. That was serious existential dread for a rock band. The world is different with Prozac.
converselyspeaking 